A Case for the Midday Savasana
“Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence. When the mind has settled, we are established in our essential nature, which is unbounded Consciousness. Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind.” — Patanjali
Savasana: the yoga pose dedicated to relaxing the body after engaging its muscles, the time in a yoga class devoted to rest. It is a conscious unwinding, an active inactivity, where the muscles untense and the mind lets thoughts passively flow through while it checks on the body it’s bonded to.
This pose is the finishing touch on most yoga classes for a reason. Yogis scan their bodies for any remaining muscular engagement from their practice and consciously cease it as it’s found. Then all control of the mind, breath, and body are surrendered for the remainder of the pose. The intention is to remove any psychological effort to release the stress of the day.
This sounds like something we could all use as we constrict our hip flexors at a desk, tense our neck muscles by hunching at our computers, and let thoughts race about our minds like a violent storm. A full relaxation of the mind and body can act as the perfect reset in the middle of the day, and the benefits only increase with practice. This time of stillness doesn’t need to be restricted to the yoga studio or even the comforts of home. A midday savasana can be beneficial in any environment at any time.
There have been times in my life when taking a step back to unclench and unwind has brought me back from the brink of giving up. While filling out job applications, words of discouragement fly around in my head until they spiral out of my control. Your resume isn’t strong enough; your application could be better; you forgot to stress this trait or that experience. My body begins to hunch over until I’m nearly folded in half. I despair that the job search will never end.
Sitting back for even just a minute to smooth out and steady my breathing and concentrate on relaxing my muscles is enough to calm the storm of negative thoughts and prepare me to carry on with the application. I sit up straighter, breathe more deeply, and focus better on the task at hand.
Savasana, or corpse pose, is one of the easiest yoga poses to attain physically. In its purest form, savasana is performed by lying on the back with legs spread as wide as the yoga mat and arms relaxed to the sides of the body. Yoga instructors often suggest other variants, such as propping the legs against the wall or supporting the knees with a bolster or other prop. The important part is not the particular placement of the limbs but that the body is able to fully relax. Sitting back in a chair with a headrest can work just as well to achieve the desired effect.
This time of relaxation, which lasts only five to ten minutes in a structured yoga class, promotes the disengagement of not only major muscle groups but also the tension in the small muscles of the face: the ones the draw the muscles around the mouth into a scowl or those that pinch or raise the eyebrows. While concentrating on other things, it’s easy to miss that those muscles are working intensely. Resting gives you a chance to also release the tongue from the roof of the mouth and let the jaw relax.
This technique helps when I’ve had a touch of caffeine and a surge of adrenaline before giving a talk or going to an interview. I feel so jittery that I’m about to fly out of my chair, with rehearsed words racing through my mind faster than I’d ever be able to speak them. A midday savasana lowers my heart rate and clears my head, allowing me to calm down and collect my thoughts.
Although easy to physically perform, savasana has been said to be one of the most difficult poses to master. Being able to focus on investigating the body then to completely let go of all effort and conscious thought (without falling asleep) is extremely challenging for me. When given a moment’s freedom, my mind instantly jumps back to the events of the day. Like almost everything, this improves with practice and doing so each day accelerates the progress.
Making savasana, and yoga as a whole, a part of your regular routine trains the mind to be flexible, in that it’s able to rapidly switch from periods of effort to periods of rest and calm. This technique of consciously relaxing the body and letting go of thoughts promotes the release of stress and tension to encourage clarity and focus. A midday savasana is a small step toward building a relationship with your body, being more conscious of your own needs, and developing a much needed routine for self-care.
So with that in mind, take some time to simply rest.
Lindsey Hiltner is a writer, thinker, and dweller on topics in philosophy, personal growth, self, and others. She graduated with a PhD in math in 2018 from the University of Minnesota. Find her at lindseyhiltner.com.
